


Tongue Tied

by SofterLips



Category: Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain
Genre: I don't care if i'm cringe anymore and the freedom is dizzying, Love Confessions, M/M, Pining, The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-07
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-14 22:54:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28553466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SofterLips/pseuds/SofterLips
Summary: A doctoral student working toward a neuro-linguistics degree has taken a special interest in Pinky. Brain is Not Having It.
Relationships: Brain/Pinky (Pinky and the Brain)
Comments: 29
Kudos: 110





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey y'all. Not sure when I'll update. Not sure how many chapters this will be.  
> But. I WILL finish this.  
> So do with that information what you will.  
> Happy to have you :D

Pinky usually awakens first. Most mornings, he's out of bed and on his wheel while Brain continues to cycle between deep, light, and REM sleep.

Brain is unusually grateful for this. Being in close quarters with Pinky can be...taxing on his mental faculties. Once, he had awoken from a most distressing dream involving whipped cream, Snowball, and a water slide. He'd turned over, dazed and discombobulated and found himself staring at Pinky's face. He was sleeping so peacefully, fur glowing like an ethereal halo, bathed in moonlight.

The basorexia[1] had been nauseating in its immediacy. He'd scrambled out of bed and doused his head repeatedly with water from the bottle while Gerry the Gerbil nearly lost consciousness from laughing so forcefully. Pinky had awoken briefly, disturbed by choking laughter and water on metal. He had warned him again about his consumption of prawns. 

He doesn't need that set of circumstances happening with any kind of frequency. His pride couldn't take it.

Because Brain is not an idiot. He knows Pinky is beautiful. He's micawberish[2], and energetic, and unnaturally kind. He knows, he knows, he _knows_ alright? But so did Pharfignewton, and that sea lion, and that Senator and surely hundreds of other people, animals, miscellaneous beings. Brain isn't special in that regard. And that is fine. Brain doesn't need to be special in that regard, because through it all, Pinky is his. His friend, his confidant, his cagemate. Plans may explode in his face, he may be middle age and underwhelming, and Pinky may launch himself into love with any breathing mammal he trips into, but Pinky wouldn't still be here if he didn't want to be. Ergo, he must want to be by Brain's side[3].

Anyway.

Brain begrudges his late sleeping tendencies this morning.

For there is a problem; there is a new intern. He doesn’t like to be vulnerable around new interns, especially not before learning their pattern of behavior and how best to manipulate it. He can hear the new voice, and he sits up and listens but she's not saying anything important. Her name, where she's from, if she has any questions, what will she be bringing for this Nacho Thursday? How...vapid. 

Brain slumps off of the bed, gets a drink of water and turns to find Pinky. Pinky is running as hard as he can on his wheel, and he only gets a huffed 'Good morning Brain!' before turning his attention back in front of his forelimbs. Wherever he's going must be a hundred miles away.

Brain eats a food pellet and observes past the cage bars. She's of short stature, broad shouldered, and has distasteful blue streaked through the ends of her brunette hair.

Brain gives her a week.

He had to run really far to get where he was going this morning, it took such a long time! Pinky's on his ninth food pellet and Brain is working on his eighth when a new human friend comes over to the cage! Wow! Her hair is fun-fun silly willy and she opens the cage and sticks her hand in and... oh. It's HIS turn! Brain usually goes first but this time it's HIS turn to be first! Narf! He hopes this human is nice-poit- because sometimes they do mean things to him and Brain and it hurts and Brain gets really quiet and doesn’t bop him on those days but sometimes they do mazes together and get moldy cheese- troz- and he likes those times.

"I'll see you later Brain! Narf!"

Brain grunts, and he gets itty bittier than normal as he's carried away, cradled in the palm of a large warm hand.

"Hello mousie," says the human. Pinky focuses on her and she's smiling at him. Pinky wags his tail.

"Can you say something for me? Apparently, you're a real chatterbox," She gives a little laugh, as though there's a joke playing in her own head. Pinky is thrilled. He has jokes in his own head all the time! He wonders if there are extra colors and words in her head too- but there must be! Because all the colors in her head got out and made her hair pretty. Narf!

"Narf!"

She jolts and comes to a stop. Pinky nearly gets thrown from her hand in her surprise and he puts his paws up in the air. Roller-coasters are fun!

"N-narf?" she repeats.

"Narf!" he yells, and gives little wiggles, little paws still in the air. None of the big human friends had ever said Narf! back before. Fun-fun silly willy!

"Holy shit," she says.

Here's the thing; ACME Labs doesn't have the best reputation. Unethical animal testing, poor management, culturally insensitive Nacho Thursdays...the list goes on. However, ACME Labs _is_ the place to be if you're interested in reaping the benefits of aforementioned unethical animal testing, poor management, and the premise of free nachos ignites something in your blood.

Doctoral candidate in neuro-linguistics Danielle Saturn[4] is looking for the next breakthrough in language development and treatment at a neurological level. She believes that Project B.R.A.I.N. may hold the key. Rumor has it that some of the test subjects could actually speak after the procedure. And where else could she have found the only surviving test subjects of the project than at ACME Labs?

So here she is, a part time intern, full time doctoral candidate at ACME Labs and what has she learned? That the majority of the research she worked so desperately to get her hands on has been _burned_ and the test subjects are _very_ unremarkable if their maze times and general behavior are anything to go by.

She’s pissed. She takes an hour to walk around the lab and its premises, then pounds a bottle of Coca-Cola like a high school freshman. It’s time for a paradigm shift.

She decides that first and foremost she needs data that is applicable to her needs. Because even throughout her hissy-fit and caffeine fix she _needs_ to know if the rumors are true. Could a mouse truly speak?

She's going to get some hard data-height, weight, descriptors of the oral mechanism, and - god. A mouse speaking.

"Hello mousie," she says. The little guy wags his tail. It's adorable.

"Can you say something for me? You're rumored to be a real chatterbox," she gives a little laugh. Because she's starting to think that this is absolutely stupid. Mice don't have the pre-requisites for speech!

Communication?

Maybe. 

But speech? Wrong articulators, minimal lung capacity, no joint attention, unfounded motor-neural pathways, lexicon-

"Narf!"

She jolts and comes to a stop. She nearly yeets the little mouse.

"N-narf?" she repeats. Because that's not what she actually heard.

"Narf!" he yells, and gives little wiggles, little paws still in the air. He's...he's _looking at her and he's talking._

"Holy shit," she says.

* * *

[1] The overwhelming urge to kiss. Brain pretends not to know what it feels like.

[2] An eternal optimist. Pinky isn't sure how to be any other way.

[3] Brain tells himself this like his life depends on it. (It does.)

[4] Yes, it’s her legal name. No, she wasn’t born with it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I mention I have a degree in linguistics, neuroscience, and communication disorders.  
> Also- the formatting is wonky for some reason? The spaces between paragraphs look huge when previewed but fine when editing? Sorry folks, I promise I'm not as incompetent as it makes me look.

Doctoral student Danielle Saturn doesn’t pass out. She does need to sit for a while though. She’s on the floor in the hallway passage between the containment center[1] and the main laboratory.

The little mousie seems happy to be hanging out in her hand. He doesn’t try and run off or bite or scratch. He just reaches down, grabs on to his feet and rocks back and forth. It’s like he’s waiting for her to do something. It seems impolite now, not to talk to him.

She looks at him and says, “I want to see what you can do mousie. I think you have a capacity for language hitherto unrecorded in your species,”

He sticks a foot in his mouth. She is not disheartened, but more cautious.

“Let’s start with the basics,” Danielle Saturn affirms. She heaves herself off the floor, careful of her passenger.

Brain is not interested in the new idiot intern.

He is _very_ interested in what the new idiot intern plans to do with his idiot Pinky.

The Brain does not often have need for accessing the lab’s CCTV monitors, but this is a special occasion[2]. It has been almost a year and a half since Pinky and he have been separated for testing for more than a few hours.

Routine dictates that Brain help Pinky cheat at whatever task they are set. Whether by yelling out answers, by having him follow along in a maze, or by showing him which water bottles to drink from he and Pinky have always tested the same. Same results, same measures, same mice; ubiquitous mediocrity that does not need to be watched too closely. The consequences of a break in this routine could be disastrous to the primary goal [3]: world domination.

Whee! They are up and walking again- which is okay because he was having trouble sticking both feet in his mouth at the same time and he really should practice yoga more but who has the time these days-

"My name is Danielle Saturn. Do you have a name mousie?"

Zort! She was talking to him again!

"Zort!"

"Zor? Zor is your name?"

None of the lab people had ever asked for his name before. Then again, none of the lab people had been from Saturn before.

"Troz!"

"Troz? Is that yes?"

She was clearly confused- she hadn’t even asked him an actual question yet! What kind of name was Zor? Ha ha poit.

"Poit,"

"Poit,"

She was copying everything he had to say! Fun-fun silly willy. Whenever he tried to play a game like Copy Me or Chase Me or Catch Me with Brain he got a bop to the head.

"You know what? I'm getting ahead of myself. Playing guessing games is not going to get us anywhere. I'm going to just call you Mousie for right now,"

Since they're playing Copy Me he nods after she does. He feels a big smile stretch his snout as he smiles and then! She smiles too and he flaps his little paws together and laughs and dances because oh-narf!- she’s so good at this game and they are going to have so so SO much fun-fun silly-willy time together.

She’s studying Pinky’s language abilities. That much is excruciatingly obvious.

He watches her take an obsessive record of every utterance he makes that isn’t a generic squeak. Brain is faintly amused- these tics don't really mean anything and she's wasting her time with them.

Pinky has been CAT scanned and given a contrast MRI. X-Rays and barium swallows have been administered. Brain sighs, helpless. It’s not as though she wouldn’t notice them switching places.

He knows those kinds of tests make Pinky feel ill, and that Pinky will do his best to bear it but often has nightmares about the MRI machine eating him. 

He ponders on tonight’s plan for world domination. Statistical probability states it will be unsuccessful regardless of Pinky's involvement. However, attempting to take over the world without Pinky feels...well. There's really no place for _feelings_ in world domination plans is there? He will let Pinky take a nap, and then they will make the attempt. He's not wasting a night on a _feeling_.

He's got some time before the intern leaves- he's not wasting a shred of evening on feelings. He'll waste it on petty revenge instead.

After all the machines and tubes in his arm had made his belly and head all swirly he was ready to go back to his cage and lay down. He misses Brain. Narf.

At first it was fun! He'd been given a cup of nasty juice to drink and he had and then she'd shown him the pictures of his own tongue! What was it doing wiggling about like that in his mouth- like a dancey tail right behind his teeth! Zort!

But then, she'd given him tubes. And she'd still been nice and she'd kept talking and making funny noises at him but the tubes hurt in his arm, and she strapped him down and put him in a loud tube that hurt his ears. And then ANOTHER tube which didn't last as long but was still loud and big and he slid inside on rolly-rollers like he was being eaten! Just gobbled up like he was some kind of mouse slip-sliding along into the belly of the world’s biggest snake.

It's such a relief to get back to the cage- back to Brain.

Brain is waiting for him, standing back far enough to let her place Pinky down, but close enough to the cage door to make it so that _he_ and _Brain_ are close which makes him feel wibbly in his legs and hammer-y in his chest and he already feels bad- poit- and – poit- but these strange feelings make him feel better but not and the words are so -zort- hard that the other fun-fun-silly words that usually fall right out of his mouth are just- poit- just-troz-

Just. Narf. He’s so tired. Thinking hurts.

The Saturn lady tells him good night. Brain watches her leave, but Pinky’s back is already turned to her and he collapses on the bed. He shuffles and scoots and turns his head to talk to Brain though.

“Hi Brain,”

“Hello, my friend,” the Brain says, in that way that makes you know that you’re his best friend in the whole wide world, “You look exhausted. Are you injured?”

“Oh Brain! She didn’t hurt me, not really, zort. It’s just, the tubes. I hate going in the tubes and having the tubes go in me and it took such a long time Brain. I couldn’t move or nothing at all! Even my tail was all strapped down. But I’m so tired now Mr. Tail doesn’t even want to wiggle,”

Pinky looks back at his rump and gives it a half-hearted shake[4]. Nope. Mr. Tail is donezo.

“Well, if you’re uninjured and do not need medical attention, then lie down and rest while I finalize the plan for tonight,”

“Why-What are we going to do tonight Brain?”

His pink eyes get sharper, and they focus on Pinky like lightening focuses on an umbrella. It's all heat and zam, zoom, kachow! It makes his fur stand on end and he licks his lips because his mouth feels dry.

“The same thing we do every night Pinky, try to take over the world!”

She hadn’t noticed at first. Once she had managed to get her hands on the few paltry pages of Project B.R.A.I.N. research that hadn’t burned, she had skipped straight to the part about the test subjects’ description. The lab mouse who had actually ‘spoken’ was a lanky male mouse with protruding dentition. She’d been very professional and hadn’t actually sprinted to go find him.

She didn’t read about the smaller mouse he shared an enclosure with. When she’d glanced inside the cage to get the lanky mouse, she had assumed the other cage member was his _female_ mate[5]. But...after completing the different tests the first day, she’s back to re-read the documents.

She adjust her glasses and reads through her bifocal lense:  
“Test subject 2 has a naturally enlarged cranium resembling that of a Volkswagen Beetle from circa 1956. The enlarged cranium is the largest ever measured in a male mouse, and statistical analysis puts the circumference at three standard deviations above the norm. The enlarged cranium is hypothesized to provide more room for the development and growth of new white and gray matter as a result of a successful gene splice. Subject 2 does not currently demonstrate any markers of increased acumen in mice.

Hazard Note: Subject 2 bites very hard and almost always in the same place. Wounds inflicted by Subject 2 never heal correctly.”

So, the two surviving Project B.R.A.I.N survivors are _male_[6], they’ve been living together for years, and aggression has never been noted between them. It’s not unheard of for male mice to get along occasionally, but not even one scuffle? Not one hissy fit over resources?

She finds this...odd.

Apparently, no one else at ACME Labs has noted the oddity of the situation. In fact, after a quick and ruthless survey of all members of the lab, she learns that no one pays the two mice any attention unless they’re out of food pellets or absolutely desperate for test subjects.

The anomaly sticks in her head for the rest of the day and into the evening as she is double and triple checking her findings and saving every shred of documentation.

She gets up and heads to the main doors through the containment center, adjusting her shoulder bag and running a hand through her hair. She looks at the cage closest to the door where her little Mousie is, and finds mean pink eyes watching her.

She has to leave right at 5:45 to catch her bus, but she had just checked the main lab’s clock and knows she’s got time. She observes: He’s placed himself between the sleeping lanky mouse and the cage door. She takes a step closer, testing a hypothesis.

He doesn’t make himself bigger.

She had sort of expected a more primal defensive posture, like that of a mammal protecting his mate from a predator.

Instead, he turns his body so that he’s facing the wall. And he doesn’t move. She takes another step. And he doesn’t move. She knows without a shadow of a doubt that if she opens that cage she’s getting bit. But it feels like he’s unnaturally still, like he’s not concerned about her coming to get the other mouse anymore. He’s staring dead ahead, and well, call it instinct, call it intuition, call it stupidity[7], she turns to look at what he’s staring at. 

He’s staring at the clock.

It’s 6:02pm.

She pulls out her phone to check and her heart plummets when it’s true- the time clicks over to 6:03. She looks back up and the little mouse is curling up with Mousie in their bedding.

She goes and waits for the next bus in the cold. She thinks all night about what is going on behind the pink eyes at ACME Labs. 

The plan does not go well. Pinky falls asleep at the wheel, Brain has to practically drag him out of the wrecked vehicle, and watch as his prototype of a fraudulent BitCoin conversion and foot massaging apparatus sinks into the bottom of a lake. Then of all indignities he has to file an insurance claim.

He’s not mad at Pinky, only because Pinky does not regain consciousness for several hours. When he does, and eventually comes to understand what happened he breaks down into tears.

Brain pats his hand, gives gentle scritches to his shoulder.

“It’s alright, dear friend. We will try again tomorrow night,”

Pinky sniffles, nods, and falls asleep almost immediately in the bedding. Brain follows suit. If he has to bite a thousand hands, Pinky will rest tomorrow.

[1] Cages. It’s a room full of cages. They’re kept in cages, in a cold laboratory. Her own ass is freezing after about 20 seconds on the floor.

[2] Brain doesn’t trust Like That. No one but Pinky has earned his trust Like That. He ponders, briefly, if Pinky knows this.

[3] The name of which is misleading, for really there are two Primary Goals. Primary Goal Alpha: World Domination. Primary Goal Beta: Keep Pinky safe. After Mr. Itch, and too many other close calls to count, Primary Goal Beta is not recognized by the Brain’s conscious mind. At this point, it’s practically instinctive. Any plan that endangers Pinky, any experiment that would put too much strain on his delicate sensibilities, Brain scraps immediately. He doesn’t think twice about it.

[4] Brain’s soul nearly leaves his body. He immediately averts his eyes and prays that Pinky won't notice the heat in his face.

[5] That’s hetero-normativity for you.

[6] That’s the patriarchy for you.

[7] Call it- Made You Look.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey y’all.  
> It’s been a hot minute- sorry for that! I hurt my hands and couldn’t type for like a week and a half. Then I caught a virus and didn't have the willpower to eat, much less type (wasn’t covid tho). 
> 
> Anyway-in case you were wondering- all of the evaluation tools in the story are all tests that can be administered to people with communication and speech disorders/delays/differences to see how they match up to “typically developing” people. Anything that sounds like techno babble nonsense is absolutely techno babble nonsense. I’m a speech pathologist not an engineer. 
> 
> WARNING: there is a brief mention of animal injury in this one. Like, very brief. But it's there.
> 
> Also- I have another Pinky/Brain story in the works. I will finish this one first though- no worries!
> 
> As always- thank you so much for reading/commenting/being patient. It means a lot. This chapter isn't my favorite, but I hope you like it :D  
> It's looking like this story will have four or five chapters total.  
> <3 SofterLips

Pinky is no longer sleeping in their shared cage.

The first night, Brain attempts to take over the world by himself. He reasons that a single night without Pinky is no excuse slack off; his destiny awaits! He is also secretly glad to have a night to himself without any inane ethical commentary. This plan is a bit less savory, a bit less...carefully gauged to Pinky’s humanitarian standards. Regardless, it goes relatively smoothly until Brain’s own acerbic tongue gets the better of him, and he tells those fools on Shark Tank what he truly thinks of their offers[1].

He misses Pinky’s sweet nature now; Pinky has the uncanny ability to smooth things out between Brain and the people of his world even if he also has the uncanny ability to completely (and unintentionally) dismantle even the most idiot proof of machines.

It turns out to be several nights without Pinky.

The second, third, and fourth nights he dips into his stash of back-up, low-tech plans so he can attempt world conquest without a lot of prep work- he simply doesn’t have the mouse power for anything too large scale without Pinky.

The fifth night ends in a flood of paperclips, the unionization of 2,000 factory workers and a bloody foot without a world to show for it. The bandage is sloppily applied but it’s the best he can do. He recognizes that Pinky's better at wound care than he is.

The sixth night he takes a break to ponder and heal. He had been operating on the assumption that Pinky was being kept in a quarantine cage, available to him if the need arose. He had observed Saturn working later and later hours and did not want to risk discovery or disturb Pinky’s rest without due cause. But tonight, he is in their cage and is able to watch Saturn leave the lab just in time to catch the last bus, with bright blue eyes peeping from her shirt pocket.

A little pink paw gives a tired wave. Brain freezes.

He doesn’t wait an extra second after he hears the front door click closed before he’s sprinting out of the cage and back toward the computer banks. Pinky has been leaving the lab _every night_ and he didn’t know?! Just what had Saturn been doing to him?

He reads and reads about all that _she_ has done to Pinky, and then reads all the things ACME is willing to do to Pinky in the future. There are pages and pages of research, and theories, and grant proposals. Pinky may be resilient, but Danielle Saturn is hoarding him and if he knows anything about ACME Labs, they will run him into the ground like some kind of show pony.

If this keeps up, not only will world domination be out of reach, but the slender mouse himself may one day be completely isolated, _away from the Brain_.

He feels his left eye start to tick, and there’s brutality brewing behind his ribs. If she thought his bites were nasty...well. Just wait until she gets a taste of his temper. He finds a magnet and gets to work.

The seventh day he has a hard time keeping his face neutral when met with the mess that calls herself Danielle Saturn. She is close to tears all day, and there’s a clump of hair missing from her right temple. Pinky is, rightfully, back in their cage that evening, and for the most part he sleeps. Brain lets him.

When he awakens, he’s very quiet and seems content just to draw with the new crayons Brain procured for him. Brain can hardly bear to disturb him.

Pinky eventually gets up and prepares some food pellets on their tin can table, and they eat together. They don’t talk about much at all- and Brain isn’t sure if he’s wasting an opportunity[2] or if this is what Pinky needs. Either way, Brain knows it’s too good to last, so he memorizes what Pinky’s sleepy breathing sounds like for future evenings.

Sure enough, that morning, Saturn comes in to get Pinky. She's got a new hair style that suits her, but that doesn't stop Brain from tearing into the flesh of her thumb when she gets too close to Pinky. 

The eighth night, he learns that Danielle Saturn is now terrified and paranoid. She’s backed every shred of information up onto the internet; triple saved it on external drives; encoded it; written it down. Brain couldn’t possibly hope to find all of her hiding spots because he has a world to rule and a Pinky to keep; he simply doesn’t have time. He rolls his eyes at himself and freezes when he notices new cameras in the rooms trained on the door and the console he is currently accessing. He’s going to have to go and delete the video and rewrite the time stamps before enacting his latest plans. What an inconvenience. But there is no point in wasting more moonlight- he will have to wait for her to make the next move.

His plans that night fail quickly. His drive for domination is no longer a burning inferno, but an ember’s glow. His edge, his need to conquer, is as present as Pinky. For the hell of it, he concocts another three plans while sitting on the sponge bed. They're terrible. He shreds them into confetti and used the scraps to make a papier mâché star to hang over Pinky’s wheel. He doesn't know why he does it, but he knows of the legend that the North Star will always take you home. He hopes Pinky likes it.

The ninth night he watches more people than he’s ever seen in the lab go in and out of the door that leads to the main exhibition hall. He hears excited voices discussing ‘Mousie’ and Danielle Saturn’s amazing work with him, how there’s been such a scandal around the deletion of her work, and the guesses around the potential perpetrator’s identity is the tastiest gossip this side of the Mississippi.

He hears ‘And when will _I_ get a turn to work with the amazing, speaking, mouse?’ multiple times.

Brain's stomach drops to the floor and the slip stream of his thoughts corrupts and halts. He’s made it worse. He’s built intrigue around Saturn’s data, practically invited others to study Pinky as well. Pinky will not be back to him anytime soon.

Someone broke in to the lab, hacked into her computer, deleted everything, and then for good measure, _fried the hard drive with a super-magnet_ _._ There is a brief inquisition, mostly useless; there is no evidence that anyone, besides Danielle, even accessed a computer console after closing time that evening. 

She gets a little paranoid. She puts Mousie back in his old cage, and then tears apart her office, the laboratory where the majority of her experiments with Mousie have been executed, and then his new cage looking for bugs or hidden cameras. She doesn’t find any. 

Frustrated and miserable, she fists her hair so hard that a small clump pulls away from her temple. She goes home and gives herself a buzz cut.

The next day, Saturn smartens up and wears gloves after her sixth attempt to remove Mousie from the cage. Pink Eyes, for whatever reason, is absolutely pissed. Her thumb and forefinger are absolutely shredded. 

After the scuffle, and lots of swearing, she sticks Mousie in her shirt pocket and raids the first aid kit in the bathroom. 

Then, she heads to the smaller lab and to the best of her ability begins to attempt to administer articulation and phonological process evaluations. Again. Danielle knows, intellectually, that the normed scores of the Goldman Fristoe Test of Articulation -3rd Edition mean absolutely nothing. It’s not exactly fair to compare the abilities of a fully grown 2 year old mouse with those of a typically developing 2 year old child now is it?

But... she’s doing it anyway.

Her data and observations of his abilities may not be the most empirically sound, but they are still _absolutely bitchin_ ’. Mousie has a perfect GFTA score for his age; standard score 140, percentile rank 99.6%. He destroys the ass of the typical 2-year old's articulation ability.

But now what?

Well, now Jim has him. Her increased attention toward Mousie has inspired some kind of mass-interest; suddenly everyone at ACME is scared silly they've missed something about the little guy after Project B.R.A.I.N was deemed a failure and they'll be damned if Danielle gets any glory all to herself.

It is for this reason that she has made the executive decision to not let Mousie out of ear shot. She's also going to keep taking him home with her. She's not asking permission. Not after the ... ‘loss’ of her data.

Jim is running empathy and emotional intelligence tests. Mousie is sitting on a little pillow with an EKG cap on. He’s been watching pictures of other animals, objects, and food items flash by on the screen for about 5 minutes.

_...button, banana, rabbit, blanket, apple, orange orchard, paper, tooth, book, couch, cup, fish..._

But now, he’s being shown videos of those same animals, objects, and food items get hurt or damaged.

... _snap the button, smash the banana, the rabbit’s caught in a trap- her foot is bleeding and she's shrieking, the blanket rips to shreds..._

She plucks a pad of sticky notes off her desk and scribbles notes to herself while Mousie is occupied. At least she has some spare time to think and gather the energy required to rewrite her thesis and grant proposals...from scratch. 

She has a few speech pathologist friends- maybe she could ask them about ways to modify the Preschool Language Scales 5th edition _without_ mentioning that she was giving the test to a mouse. She also needs to investigate Mousie’s ability to follow directions so she can make a modified receptive language examination using pieces of the Clinical Evaluation of Language Foundations-5th Edition and the Test of Integrated Language and Literacy Skills.

Or she could just _make up_ a receptive/expressive language exam. Make a mouse test for studying mouse language normed across many mouse populations. She sighs. She needs caffeine and about 15 minutes to cry really, really hard.

Danielle Saturn shakes her head and stares at the square on her desk.

What else? She thumps her bandaged thumb on the note pad.

She puts ‘behavioral anomalies and norms’ on her sticky note.

Initially, she was worried he would miss Pink Eyes. Pink Eyes clearly has some kind of feelings about _him._ But Mousie seems to be doing alright. She figures it must be hard for him to be lonely- she's seen him snuggle and preen a dust bunny.

She opens up a blank document on her computer and stares balefully at the cursor.

Her head damn near hits the ceiling when she hears the crying start. Her immediate thought is that Jim’s finally having a meltdown. But when she really looks, it’s _Mousi_ _e_.

The crying doesn’t sound like the high, distressed squeaking that she’s heard him make before when he needed an IV drip for the MRI almost two weeks ago.

This sounds like a sobbing human[3].

She immediately begins to record the sounds he’s making on her phone. She and Jim are absolutely stock still, and Jim doesn’t seem to regain higher brain function until the TV goes black. Mousie is disconnected from the EKG cap and the glue is gently rubbed off his fur with a cotton ball. Jim gives him a few pieces of circus peanut candy from his pocket and puts on cartoons for him to watch. Jim leaves with the expression of man who doesn't know anything anymore.

Mousie settles after that, and Danielle begins to type. 

"Test Subject 1: male mouse, 2 years old. Subject has undergone genetic splicing as result of Project B.R.A.I.N. experimentation. This paper explores the various anomalous behaviors exhibited by this subject. He has not demonstrated heightened intellectual abilities when tested by conventional means (i.e. timed mazes, swimming tasks, short term/long term recognition of cheese types). However, under laboratory conditions Subject 1 has demonstrated the ability to produce all English phonemes in isolation, to produce words spontaneously, and cry. He maintains the ability to copy nonsense syllables and Consonant-Vowel, Consonant-Vowel-Consonant, and Consonant-Vowel-Consonant-Vowel words..."

The next time she looks at the clock it's 3 pm.

She's written most of the introduction, most of the observational analysis; she's been putting off the objective analysis because she's tired, and the numbers are starting to blur.

She looks at Mousie. He's finished his peanuts, and seems to be bored watching TV; he can't seem to sit still, bouncing and hopping to different commercial jingles. She gets up, and stretches her back.

"You need to move too, huh Mousie?"

She moves to pick him up, when in the corner she sees a few large table top mazes. It's labeled R2B2-930. She recognizes it as a maze that he's run with Pink Eyes, but he has never run this by himself before. She sticks Mousie in her pocket, and clears off the floor. She puts the big maze down in the middle of the room, and then goes to get some cheese for Mousie and some yogurt and Coca Cola for herself.

She places the cheese at the end, and Mousie in the 'airlock'. He seems very excited at first, and when she opens the door and gets inside the maze he runs back and forth sniffing the air, squeaking loudly.

But then...he seems to give up. Danielle watches as he goes to the same two dead-ends seven different times and then sits down, quietly and looks at her.

She gives a little laugh and shrugs at him, spoon in her mouth.

“Mousie- don’t you know where to go? You’ve gotta go straight, honey,” she says around another spoonful of yogurt.

Mousie turns tail and runs straight. Danielle’s mouth drops, and her spoon clatters to the floor.

When he hits another wall, he stops, and looks at her again. She can’t believe this. All of her stress about testing his receptive language, and now she has actual evidence that he can understand her. Unbelievable. 

She switches her camera on and trains it onto the mouse.

“Go left Mousie,”

He goes.

Once they're done, and he's eating his cheese, Saturn picks him up and they hunt around the lab for every table top maze she can find. There are 10 in total, and though he has done each before, she gives him directions each time. He does not always follow directions accurately[4] but when she compares these times to the times that he had scored previously, they are _statistically significant._ He _understood_ her directions _._

She wonders how he would do if... he had a different partner.

She leaves Mousie behind, and sets off to find something to protect her hands. Like oven mitts. Or kevlar.

[1] He’s unceremoniously booted out the door. The pain of a hard landing lingers in his right buttock.

[2] ‘An opportunity for what?’ he thinks. ‘Why does having him back in my sight lift so much stress from my frame?’ His higher brain functions shrug. His heart answers with a clench, but he ignores it. He keeps that thing locked up for a reason. It consistently gives embarrassing advice.

[3] This unsettles her more than she can say. A dog with a hurt paw doesn’t whine in distress like a raccoon chitters in garbage soaked euphoria. A horny dolphin doesn’t click like a depressed whale. So why the hell is a mouse sobbing like a heartbroken human?

[4] Concepts like ‘left’ and ‘right’ seem to confuse him. She says ‘other right’ a lot.


End file.
